A Multiple Streams Analysis of Institutional Innovation in Forest Watershed Governance

Increasingly severe wildfires have focused attention on forested watershed vulnerabilities, causing significant changes to policies and governance. We utilized the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) to understand institutional innovations of federal agency–large water provider partnerships in Colorado to protect watersheds through joint planning and funding. Ambiguous problem definition and focusing events were significant aspects of these partnerships. We interviewed individuals in the partnerships, with MSA ideas of how solutions to policy problems develop, and the role of policy entrepreneurs. We found that wildfires served as focusing events, creating space and time for learning, collaboration and new problem framing, increased political attention, and institutional innovation. In this study, windows of opportunity stayed open longer, policy entrepreneurs and agencies played larger roles in communication and coupling streams and the context of fast‐moving, unpredictable ecological crises changed responses to issues. Our findings also have implications for broader policy studies and environmental governance scholarship.     

The Science–Policy Nexus in Collaborative Governance: Use of Science in Ecosystem Recovery Planning

Across many social–ecological systems, policy makers and scholars increasingly call for science to inform policy. The science–policy interface becomes especially complex as collaborative approaches include multiple stakeholders working together across jurisdictions. Unfortunately little is known about how much and how science is used in collaborative governance for social–ecological systems. This exploratory study examines instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic use of science in a science‐rich collaborative planning case in the Puget Sound, USA. It also examines the influence of science, relative to other factors, in collaborative planning, and what factors affect it. Results from a survey and document analysis indicate the prevalence of conceptual use of science, with relatively little symbolic use. Some factors promoting conceptual and instrumental use discourage symbolic use. Overall, while science is seen as influential in this science‐rich context, its influence is balanced by local stakeholder preferences and contextual information.     

Guardians of the environment in Canada’s Chemical Valley

Citizens of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation fight for justice with their bodies at the frontlines of daily toxic exposure. This paper examines struggles for environmental and reproductive justice in the polluted heart of Canada’s ‘Chemical Valley’. These are as struggles over life, land and knowledge. Based upon community-engaged qualitative research, from a participatory action research approach, including field immersion, participant observation and 35 in-depth interviews with First Nations residents, I document the Aamjiwnaang First Nation’s citizens’ activities and practices on the ground as they cope with the impact of their contaminated surroundings on their health and habitat. This community-engaged scholarship lens brings into view the lived experiences and ongoing practices of resistance by the Anishinabek citizens who are surrounded by Chemical Valley. I situate these struggles within the green citizenship literature to assess three blind spots of green governmentality: greening citizenship, lifestyle blame and Western dualisms. I discuss the multiple edges of ecological citizenship and argue that citizens are simultaneously bound up within disciplinary power relations and place-based belonging. This place, although polluted, is crucial to practices of relational Anishinabek citizenship and the identity of indigenous citizens who call this place both ‘prison and home’.     

Had we but world enough,and time: integrating the dimensions of global justice

Requirements for a decent life are to be found in the dimensions both of human time and ecological space. While the latter has attracted attention from some global justice theorists, the former is a comparably neglected matter. This paper aims to integrate temporal and ecological perspectives in order to provide an enriched conceptual framework for grasping what global justice means today. We begin by showing that while contemporary political philosophy tends to assume a somewhat undifferentiated conception of time, treating temporal justice as a future-oriented concern distinct from issues of intra-generational justice, there are richer understandings to be found in some influential schools of critical social theory. Drawing then, particularly, on Alf Hornborg’s theory of ‘unequal exchange of time and space’, and supplementing this with insights from David Harvey, we analyse three ways in which disadvantage can be perpetrated in the dimension of time. We then show how those categories of temporal disadvantage broadly correspond with the three basic rights identified by Henry Shue. On this basis, we claim there is a strong argument for regarding temporality as an integral aspect of global justice here and now, for the generation already – although too often precariously – living.     

‘Not Welcome at the Holiday Inn’: How a Sarajevan Hotel Influenced Geo-politics

ABSTRACT

During the reporting of the 1992–95 Bosnian War, the bright yellow Holiday Inn played host to many of the most renowned characters involved in documenting, resolving and perpetuating the conflict. It provided the visual background for numerous television broadcasts, provided the infrastructure to send the reports around the world via satellite and created the environment to negotiate agreements and hold conferences and briefings. But the building has never been regarded as anything more than a neutral or slightly bizarre backdrop to the events that took place there before, during and after the conflict. Closer examination reveals three ways in which the hotel needs to be considered as co-constitutive of the conflict: (1) in the conflict geography and conflict epistemology; (2) in the forging of a common international subjectivity; and (3) as a material, symbolic and informational resource. Taken together, this also contributes to considerations of how the built environment is an integral part of understandings of contemporary conflict.     

The ignoble savage in urban Yerevan

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on a recent development in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, described by its urban population as a ruralization process. I explore what it means to call something or someone ‘rural’ or ‘urban’, and I compare the social category of ‘rural people’ with the social category of the (old) urban intelligentsia. This includes an analysis and reconsideration of the traditional ‘nature–culture dichotomy’ and its meaning for the architecture and urban planning of Yerevan. It also interrogates the classification of people into newcomers from the countryside, urban dwellers, new elites, and young men called rabiz.     

环境侵权行为认定相关问题探讨

环境侵权行为是一种特殊的侵权行为 ,其归责原则是确定侵权行为人侵权责任的根据和标准 ,现代各国有关保护环境的立法均将无过错责任确定为环境侵权行为的归责原则 ,我国亦不例外。     

Social-Demographic,School, Neighborhood,and Parenting Influences on the Academic Achievement of Latino Young Adolescents

Using data from a national sample of 388 Latino young adolescents, this study identified the social-demographic characteristics, influences in the broader social environment, and parenting practices that predict youth academic achievement. Youths who were Mexican American, older, and had an English language problem had lower levels of reading and mathematics achievement. Youths of mothers who began childbearing at older ages, had higher levels of intellectual abilities, and reported no English language problem scored better on both types of achievement tests, but poverty was related only to reading achievement. Attendance in higher-rated schools was associated with higher reading and mathematics scores, but residence in better quality neighborhoods was related only to reading achievement. Three parenting practices—providing cognitive stimulation, parent–youth conflict, and academic involvement—predicted both types of achievement. The effect of poverty on reading achievement was explained by residence in lower quality neighborhoods, lower levels of cognitive stimulation, and parent–youth conflict.Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Received PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Research interests include examining the effects of poverty and other risk factors on the well-being of children, adolescents, and families.     

北美自由贸易协定对环境与贸易问题的协调及其启示

北美自由贸易协定在环境合作委员会的主导下,充分尊重成员国的主权,给予发展中国家实质性的能力支持,赋予成员国确定本国环境保护水平的自由裁量权,建立独立的区域环境贸易争端解决机制,在协调区域内成员国间环境标准及协调区域贸易协定与多边环境协定间的关系等方面构建了一个全新的模式。北美自由贸易协定对环境与贸易问题的协调模式对多边贸易体制协调环境与贸易问题有诸多的启示和借鉴意义。     

国际生态环境问题及其对我国环境立法的启示

当今一系列的生态环境问题 ,包括生物多样性锐减、森林面积减少、土地资源状况恶化、水环境恶化、气候变暖等已日趋国际化 ,严重危及到整个人类的生存。这些问题往往是在各国国内进行的国际法未加禁止行为造成的。在这样的情况下 ,本文指出了当今我国生态环境保护立法方面的缺陷 ,其中涉及到管理体制、立法意识、现行法律本身等问题。面对这些问题 ,文章指出我国生态环境立法要加快与国际接轨 ,树立风险防范原则的立法理念等一系列措施 ,以达到可持续发展的目的。